Birds' memories help them learn to fly

SHEFFIELD, England, Aug. 15 (UPI) -- British researchers have determined the reason birds learn to fly so easily is because of genetically specified latent memory for flying.

University of Sheffield researcher Jim Stone and colleagues used simple models of brains called artificial neural networks as well as computer simulations to test their theory. The scientists discovered learning in previous generations indirectly induces the formation of a latent memory in the current generation, therefore decreasing the amount of learning required.

Stone said such effects are especially pronounced if there is a large biological "fitness cost" to learning, in which biological fitness is measured in terms of the number of offspring each individual has.

"This new theory has its roots in ideas proposed by James Baldwin in 1896, who made the counter-intuitive argument that learning within each generation could guide evolution of innate behavior over future generations," said Stone. "Baldwin was right but in ways more subtle than he could have imagined because concepts such as artificial neural networks and distributed representations were not known in his time."

The study is to be reported in the journal PLoS Computational Biology.